How to Find Your Inner Toro

The following is adapted from Tafolla Toro.

The three years I spent at Tafolla Middle School in San Antonio, Texas, included some of the most terrifying experiences of my life. I lived in a constant fog of fear, with a knot in my stomach so tight that I wouldn’t use the bathroom or eat lunch at school.

One bright spot in my confusing days, and one of the few things I loved about Tafolla, was the school’s mascot, the Tafolla Toro. I liked it so much that I even named my book after it. Toro is the Spanish word for bull. The school colors were red, white, and black, and the Tafolla Toro was red and tough-looking, like he was red-hot angry and ready for a fight.

Most of the time, I didn’t feel much like a toro. Would you, in that situation? My spirit felt small and constrained and I was constantly on the lookout to make sure I didn’t suffer ridicule or violence.

The Tafolla toro, and my identification with it, reminded me that despite my fear, I was strong. I felt a little tougher when I told myself that I, too, was a toro like our mascot. Those years made a great impression on me and shaped the man I became. Eventually, after I unraveled the fear, they yielded some of the most valuable lessons I’ve learned about mental health. I found that my toro spirit was always there, waiting to be expressed, even if it was hard to locate at times.

A Family of Toros

I loved the Tafolla Toro for many reasons. Not only because I felt tough when I thought of myself as a Toro but also because both Mom and Pops have family stories about toros, and I loved it when they told them to me.

The first came from one of my father’s uncles, who owned a huge bull named Tiburcio. One day Pops’ uncle got a call that Tiburcio had wandered over to a neighboring ranch. He had walked straight through about three different fences. Pops said that once a toro puts his head down, nothing can stop him. His uncle walked over to the ranch and the owner looked at him surprised, and said, “Did you bring a truck and trailer?”

“No,” said Pops’ uncle.

“Did you bring a rope to lasso him?”

“No.”

“How are you going to get him home?”

Pops’ uncle pulled out a bowl filled with feed and shook it. As soon as he heard it, Tiburcio walked straight up to Pops’ uncle. His uncle walked all the way back to his ranch shaking the bowl of food, and Tiburcio followed him all the way. No rope, no truck.

My mom’s story was more dramatic. When she was a little girl, mom’s family were all migrant workers. One of the places they worked was a beet farm in North Dakota. Saturday was their day off, so my grandfather Eufracio Jaime, who was very proud that he had all the vowels in his name, gave them three options for pleasure.

They could go to the city dump and look for comic books, dolls, and toys while Grandma Petra looked for dishes. They could go to the movie theater and pay a nickel for “Take a Chance,” gambling on the movie that was playing. Or, they could watch Grandpa Eufracio fight the farm’s bull. Naturally, they chose the third option.

Mom said Grandpa would use my Tia Delia’s red dress as the cape to taunt the bull, and the entire family sat on the corral and cheered for him. He would look at the bull, wave my tia’s red dress, and say to him, “Toro! Se te murió tu mama,” which means, “Bull, your mother is dead.”

Every time the bull would make a pass, he made the family yell, “OLE!” and “BRAVO!” Just like I imagine happening at The Running of the Bulls in Spain. Toro is in my blood: On the Gomez side, we were the tamers of bulls, and on the Jaime side, we were fighters of bulls. I was born to be a Tafolla Toro.

Being Human Means We Will Face Fear

When I showed up at Tafolla Middle School, I was thrust into a scary and unfamiliar environment. Looking back, I can see that I was starting an adventure. At the time, all I knew was that the unspoken rules of the school felt strange and alarming.

I’m pretty sure you’ve had experiences like this. In life, there are lots of things we don’t get to pick. We don’t get to pick our parents or where we grow up. We don’t get to pick how much money or influence our family has. We don’t get to pick our neighbors are. As kids, we don’t get to pick the neighborhood our school is in, or who’s in our class. These are things that the universe conspires to put together, and we have no control over them.

What we can pick is how we react to our environment. Even as adults, we may believe that we don’t have choices. In truth, we’re always in charge of our emotions and how we express them. Most importantly, we’re in charge of the story we tell ourselves.

A Navy SEAL once told a buddy of mine that the greatest fear of all is the fear of the unknown. When people are in that mode, when they don’t know something, they become afraid of it.

It’s okay to be afraid in the face of the unknown. That’s human nature. It’s a natural, healthy response. The problem comes when we stay afraid. Ernest Hemingway once said, “A really brave fighting bull is afraid of nothing on earth…” Well guess what, we are not bulls. We are humans with complex emotions. And the bravest thing we can do is learn how to process our emotions.

Discovering Your Inner Toro

I identified with the Tafolla Toro because it looked big and fierce and mean—everything I wished I could be when I felt small and scared. Now I recognize that I only understood true bravery when I started to face up to those experiences and remember what it was like to feel such anxiety. I only understood true bravery when I looked my fear in the face.

That’s how I discovered my inner toro. That’s how I found the courage to step away from patterns of addiction and prize my mental and emotional health. What are you frightened of? What is there in your life that asks you to discover courage you didn’t know you had?

It’s okay to be afraid. The unknown is a frightening place. If you can face your fears, acknowledge your emotions, and refuse to allow yourself to be defined by those fears, you will truly have discovered your toro spirit.

For more advice on discovering your toro spirit, you can find Tafolla Toro on Amazon.

Lorenzo Gomez III overcame his mental health obstacles to become a proud participant in the transformation of the city he loves—San Antonio. He’s the chairman of Geekdom, Texas’s largest coworking space, the cofounder of the 80/20 Foundation and Tech Bloc, and has served on the board of several non-profits, including SA2020 and City Education Partners. Lorenzo is honored to have spoken at several universities, including Texas State and UTSA, and cherishes the opportunity to connect with students as a speaker at local schools. He’s the author of The Cilantro Diaries, which quickly became a bestseller (and required reading at Texas A&M) when it was published in 2017.